Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God

"In this book Greta Christina tackles the subject of death with the insight of a philosopher and the relaxed candor of a friend — that really cool, intelligent friend who understands and cares."
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Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God by Greta Christina -- available now!

Coming Out Atheist

“"Witty, wise, helpful, and humane, this clear and engaging book is most timely.”
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Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why by Greta Christina -- available now in ebook, print, and audiobook!

I Support Atheism Plus!

Atheists plus we care about social justice.
Atheists plus we support women’s rights.
Atheists plus we protest racism.
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia.
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

EVENTS

This Week

Here’s a dirty story. (Family members and others who don’t want to read my porn: Now would be a good time to stop reading.)

I wrote this story a couple of years ago, and it’s become one of my favorites. (Not that the list is that long — I don’t write fiction nearly as often as I do non-fiction, since… well, that’s the subject of another post.) FYI, while I usually illustrate my blog posts with lots of pictures, I’m not going to do that here. I want you to be able to picture the characters yourself, the way you imagine them, so I’m leaving this one picture-less. This story originally appeared in the anthology “Naughty Spanking Stories A-Z 2″, and was reprinted in the collection “C Is For Coeds.” The world of erotic fiction: A class act all around.

This Week
Copyright 2007 Greta Christina

Here’s what it is this week. A girl, a college student, is being spanked by her college professor. She’s young, nineteen or twenty, young enough to be in college, but old enough to have some sexual knowledge. He’s older, of course, probably in his forties, dressed casually but with dignity, a trim beard with a hint of gray. She is dressed, not in the schoolgirl outfit of porn cliche, but in regular modern clothing that merely implies the schoolgirl look: a short skirt with a flare, a simple blouse, white panties. The white panties are important. She is bent over his lap with her skirt pulled up and her panties pulled down, and he is spanking her with his hand.

Here’s how they got there. I think of the girl as the instigator of the scenario. I think of her sitting in this man’s class: admiring him, becoming excited by his ideas and his authority and his ease with his body. I think of her feeling flustered in his presence: not stupid, but young, and acutely self-conscious of her youth and her limitations. And I imagine these feelings coalescing into the simple image in her mind, the lap and the bare bottom and the hand coming down again and again. I think of her, not coolly deciding to act on her thoughts, but doing it impulsively, not even entirely consciously; just coming to him after classes for help and advice, putting herself in his path, waiting to see what happens next.

Now. I imagine her going to his house after a test, a test on which she had done fine but could have done better. She goes to his house, dressed only somewhat on purpose in the short skirt and simple blouse and white panties. She goes to his house, apparently upset about her less-than-ideal test score, telling him that she clearly needs more help. She works herself into an agitation, a frustration about her academic performance that even she half-believes. At the same time, she’s deliberately, or semi-deliberately, being provocative, displaying her body, putting herself in poses both seductive and submissive. She talks about how lazy she is, how little self-discipline she has, how she needs external discipline to succeed — and she drops something on the floor and turns away from him to pick it up. She says she can’t achieve her best unless she fears being punished, says a B+ grade isn’t enough punishment to drive her to excel — and she bends over his desk to examine a knick-knack on the far side. She uses the word “punishment” again and again, and she keeps finding ways and reasons to turn away from him and bend over.

He’s not an idiot. He’s an adult, a middle-aged man of the world, and he can see what she wants. He wants it too; she’s a lovely girl, she makes him feel powerful and wise, and the thought of bending her over his lap makes his dick twitch. At the same time, he’s not an idiot. He knows how much trouble he could get into if he’s guessing wrong, or for that matter if he’s guessing right. So he’s careful. He asks her if she wants his help, if she wants him to provide this external motivation she’s missing, to give her the punishment she needs when she fails to reach her potential. She breathes a deep breath of relief and excitement, says yes, please, can he help her. He asks again: are you sure you want this discipline, are you sure you want to be punished for not doing your best, are you sure you want me to do it. She begins to pace around the room, agitated and anxious, saying yes, yes please, that’s why she came here, this is what she wants.

He looks at her face, steadily, until she stops pacing and looks at him back. They’re no longer speaking in code.

Do you want this, he says. Do you want me to punish you.

She nods. She can’t say it out loud.

Alright, he says. Come here.

She walks over and stands next to him. He pats his lap; he can’t say the words either, and he needs her to make the gesture on her own. She stares at his lap, and at his hands, and she awkwardly kneels on the floor and crawls over his knees.

He’s done this before. Not often, but more than once, and he knows what he’s doing. He pulls up her skirt, not slow and sexy, not rough and impatient, but deliberate, matter-of-fact, getting the job done. He waits for her breathing to relax, then puts his hands on her waist and pulls down her panties. He moves a bit slower this time, but his manner is not teasing or sensual; the slowness is methodical, patient, done with calm authority. He looks at her bare bottom, listens to her breath, waits.

He doesn’t caress her — this isn’t about that — but he does rest his hand on her bottom. She flinches, then realizes that he hasn’t started yet, and tries to relax. He waits again. And then he begins to spank her.

His first blow is a real one. Not extreme, but she knows right away that she’s being spanked. He waits, and delivers another blow, exactly the same. And then he begins to spank her in earnest. The spanking is slow, she can feel it each time his hand strikes her bottom. She begins to squirm; she’s embarrassed now, self-conscious about what she’s doing and how she must look, a grown woman being punished on her bare bottom like a child. And it hurts, it’s hard now and it hurts, she wasn’t expecting that. But she can’t bring herself to say anything, she’d feel like a fool just quitting in the middle… and now it’s lighter, and she thinks she can take it a little longer.

He says nothing. He concentrates on the spanking, watches her body, listens to her breathe. His cock is getting hard, it’s telling him to squeeze her tits and then spank her as hard as he can; but he ignores it, tells it to be content with her warmth and her wriggling, and he centers his attention on just how hard he’s spanking her, and what exactly she’s doing about it.

She’s squirming harder now. She feels how warm her bottom is getting, she can picture how pink it must be by now. She’s getting agitated, and confused. The hard ones make her flinch and curl up — but the light ones give her time to think, and to feel: how small she is, and how flustered; her fear of the next really hard one; her uneasy frustration when the hard ones stop; her excitement; her shame at being excited; her hips wriggling against his lap. A good hard one comes down out of nowhere, and she cries out in relief and arches her back.

He still says nothing. He looks carefully now at her arched back and clenched fists, listens to the change in her voice. He stops, pulls his hand up high, and gives her five hard smacks, very hard, as fast as he can.

He listens as her cries of outrage subside into gasps. He considers starting again; he considers giving her a comforting pat on her pink bottom; he considers putting his hand between her legs. He’s pretty sure he could do any of these things, and she’d respond. But he’s nervous now, and doesn’t know how far he wants this to go. So he pulls up her panties, carefully, not touching her skin. He pulls her skirt back down over her bottom, and then puts his hands behind his back.

She scrambles to her feet right away, looks down at the floor, her face red. She mumbles something — “Thank you, Professor,” he thinks — and waits expectantly. “Good,” he says. “That was very good.” She stares at the floor for a moment, then scrambles for her things, mumbles “Thank you” again, and scurries out the door.

Here’s what happens next. They meet once a week at his house. They don’t discuss it, they don’t make a plan; she just shows up at his door the next week at the same time, as if they had an appointment. She puts down her things, and she tells him about her schoolwork, the week’s successes and failures. He congratulates her on her achievements, and then he analyzes her failures, explaining exactly what she did wrong and why it matters. And then he pats his lap.

It always has to be a punishment. She can’t simply walk in the door and say “Okay, let’s get to the spanking.” And neither can he. They can’t quite acknowledge what this is, they find it easier to think of it as instruction, discipline. Anyway, it’s more exciting this way. So he begins to write tests, every week, just for her, tests for her to make mistakes on. She’s a bright girl and she wants to please him; so he has to make the tests hard, hard enough that she’ll miss at least one question and will need to be punished. She takes the tests very seriously, studies hard for them. She does, in fact, become a better student during this time, in all her classes, not just his. And she never misses a question on purpose. She would consider that cheating, and she is a serious student, appalled at the idea of cheating. She’s always excited when he points out her errors and pats his lap; but she’s always a bit disappointed as well, upset at herself for failing, and believing, at least somewhat, that she really is being punished, and that she deserves it.

As the weeks go by, they become more accustomed to each other. Their rhythm becomes more fluid, the ritual more detailed, the spankings longer and more intense. He begins to talk during the spankings, sometimes lecturing in detail on that week’s failures, sometimes just chanting, “Bad girl! Bad! You can do better! You need discipline! You need to be punished! Punished! Bad!” He knows by now the words that set her off, the ones that make her whimper and arch her bottom in the air — and he knows the ones that make her freeze up. He knows how hard she likes to be spanked… and he knows how hard is just a little harder than she really likes, how hard is hard enough to make her feel that she’s been bad, and is being punished for it.

As more weeks go by, he begins to ask if she needs any special punishment, something extra to make her pay closer attention. The first time she doesn’t understand what he’s getting at, she says no thank you, Professor, please just punish me. But she gets it later, alone in bed that night; and the next week when he asks again, she has her answer ready. Yes, she says. She fears that his hand isn’t a hard enough tool for serious discipline, doesn’t make her fearful enough or sorry enough for what she’s done. She says she needs to be punished with something harder, something that will make her more afraid to fail, something to really hurt her and make her feel ashamed. He asks her to be specific — he always needs her to ask for it, always needs it spelled out — and she’s learned by now to speak up. She asks him to please spank her with a ruler, wooden or maybe metal, or with his hairbrush. He tells her to fetch his ruler — the hairbrush is too personal for him — and she goes directly to his desk and takes it out of the top drawer. She knows exactly where he keeps it.

And as still more weeks go by, the special punishments become both more elaborate and more central to the ritual. The bare-bottom over-the-knee hand spankings, once the entire reason for them being there, now become prelude — neither of them will call it foreplay — to the special punishments she asks for each week. She asks him to spank her with a rolled-up newspaper. She asks him to make her say out loud what a bad girl she is while he spanks her. She asks him to make her get on her hands and knees and kiss the floor while he spanks her. She asks him to use the ruler to spank her between her legs. She asks him to keep spanking her until she cries.

She never asks him to fuck her. He never does.

The end of the semester draws near, and both of them are a bit at a loss. She has one more year before she graduates, and no more classes with him. She starts asking about her final exam; her questions are anxious, restless. He’s pretty sure he knows what she wants. With some regret he begins crafting her final. He spends every spare moment on it. He knows it has to be perfect.

She comes to his house for the final, wearing the same short skirt and simple blouse and white panties she wore for their first lesson. He hands her the test, and she takes it without a word and begins immediately, working fiercely and steadily like a buzz saw. When she finishes, she hands it back and waits silently, tapping her fingers on her knee.

It’s perfect, he says at last. No mistakes.

They both sit still, somewhat taken aback, sitting quietly together in the empty space that has just opened up. He guessed exactly right, this is what she wanted. But neither of them had thought about what to do next.

So, he says. No punishment today. You get punished for making mistakes. What do you get when you’re perfect? Do you get a reward?

She doesn’t know what to say. She’d imagined in detail how the test would go; a serious challenge, just barely within her abilities. She’d imagined her struggle to get through it, the rush of pride when he told her she was perfect. But she hadn’t thought any further than that.

A reward, she says.

She could ask him to kiss her. She could ask him to fuck her. She could ask him to spend the afternoon feeding her tea and cakes and telling her how much he admired her. She could ask him to take off her shirt and play with her nipples, could tell him exactly how she wanted him to do it, and then she could make him get on his knees on the floor in front of her and lick her pussy. She could ask to sit in his lap, the lap she’s been bent over so many times, and have him stroke her hair and tell her what a good girl she was. She could ask him to make her masturbate, make her lie back and spread her legs and show him how she did it, and then make her turn over onto her belly and keep masturbating, while he punished her hard on her bottom for doing it. She could ask him to give her all her special punishments over again, one after the other until she’s weeping and raw, and then pin her down over his desk and push his cock into her ass. She could ask him to make the decision, to take the initiative, to for fuck’s sake, just this once, not make her come to him. She could ask him to take her over his knee, and pull up her skirt and pull down her panties, and spank her bare bottom with his hand one more time.

I’m getting all A’s this semester, she says. Every class. I think I’m going to make the Dean’s list. And I got a special summer internship, a really good one. She tells him the professor she’s interning with, and he’s impressed, and a little jealous. That’s great news, he says. I’m really pleased to hear it.

A reward, she says. I don’t know. Let me think about it. She gathers her things, says, “Thank you, Professor,” in a clear voice, and quietly leaves, shutting the door behind her.

You have a gift for writing, I will say that. I don’t normally go for stories about discipline and punishment which have no bondage in them; but here you have illustrated the ideal power relationship between sub and Dom(me.)